The result of the polarized elections of 23-J has a historical reading that reflects the deep political changes that Spain has experienced during the last decade. These changes are summed up in a noticeable shift to the right of the electorate that condemns the left to a subordinate position or to a tie in votes with the conservative bloc as a realistic maximum aspiration. In other words, Spain has ceased to be a centre-left country, whose hegemony was expressed in the more than 12 million votes that the PSOE and the EU were able to obtain in 1996, 2004 or 2008.
For its part, the right (PP, UPyD and Ciutadans) obtained in 2008 – the year of the maximum deployment of bipartisanship – a little over 10.5 million votes. That result was recorded after the popular people managed to redeem themselves from the lies of 11-M, which had cost them the loss of power and more than half a million votes in the 2004 elections. However, since 2008, the conservative bloc – although with new brands, such as Vox – has no longer fallen below ten and a half million votes (its worst result, in November 2019), while it managed its ceiling in 2011 (with 12 million ballots between the PP and UPyD). But on 23-J the right was almost 800,000 votes short of that record (see graphs).
For its part, the left has also never repeated the 12.3 million votes of 2008. The closest it has been (just over half a million votes away) was in the 2015 elections , a genuine expression of punishment at the polls against the cuts and corruption of the main force of the right (although thanks to the votes of Citizens, that space was still above its minimum of 2008).
However, in the elections eight years ago, the left presented itself divided into three offers: an aging PSOE and still marked by Rodríguez Zapatero’s adjustment policy, an emerging alternative left that embodied Podemos, and the traditional Esquerra united And the electoral system was responsible for converting its advantage of one million votes over the center and the right into a count of fewer seats (161 against 163).
The repeat election in 2016 left the left nearly two million votes short of its 2008 ceiling. Two-thirds of those losses went to abstentions, but the rest, about 600,000 voters, gave support on the right. On the other hand, the following elections – in 2019 and already with the PSOE in power – gave the progressive bloc 11.3 million votes. This result – the best in the last seven years – meant, however, a setback of one million voters compared to their records of 1996 or 2008. And as a result of this, the right achieved a tie in votes, although it was still a long way from its 2011 result.
From here, and if you take into account that on July 23 the left-wing forces got less than 11 million votes (a million and a half below their historical high), the question is inevitable: what What happened to the historic majority of the left? And the answer seems to be found in the changing behavior of almost two million voters since the 2008 elections, when bipartisanship was at its peak.
Of course, it is not in all cases the same voters from 15 years ago, since the generational shift alone has meant the entry of more than six million new voters into the census and the departure of around four million. But the electoral results from 2016 suggest that almost 700,000 left-wing voters are today in the conservative space.
And the rest of the losses on the left? As already noted, on the 23rd J left the progressive bloc one and a half million votes short of its historical maximum. Discounting those who have ended up in the conservative block, there would still be almost a million voters to be awarded, but which would be distributed between abstention (now much larger than in April 2019) and some minority formations.
In short, there are almost two million errant voters in Spain. And in them is the key to the outcome. About 700,000 seem to have definitely switched from left to right, even if they don’t always vote: they didn’t do it in November 2019, but almost all of them did on 23-J. The rest, more than a million voters since 2016, appear to have settled into abstention, although more than half a million reappeared in the ranks of the left in April 2019 for give the victory to Sánchez. On the other hand, on the 23rd, almost a million missed the appointment with the ballot boxes again. And that is why, unlike in April 2019, the PP-Vox block got more votes than the PSOE and Sumar on 23-J.
Nevertheless, even if the errant voters who remain abstention and who previously voted for the left returned to their place of origin to the point of forcing – as in 2019 – a tie in votes with the right (or until and even a slight advantage), the electoral system and the abduction of Ciutadans by the PP would condemn the PSOE and Sumar to continue obtaining less, or at least a similar number of seats as the conservative formations. In other words, the government options of the Spanish progressive bloc inevitably demand an understanding with the peripheral nationalists (even if the errant voters of the right chose to abstain, as they did in November 2019).
